


Eyes on Fire

by d__T



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Brainweird and reality bending, Drug Withdrawal, Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Sexual Trauma, Long live the Interceptor!, eventual redemption maybe, feels and healing, if you want a dozen chapters or so of furiosa helping max be a person again, max in a muzzle, max on a leash, max!whump, this is probably the fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4088695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's several years after the events of Fury Road. The Citadel is ruled (benevolently) by The Sisters and Furiosa spends most of her time helping them out, protecting The Citadel, and mechanicking. Out on a trading expedition, she's offered a man on a leash.</p><p>She buys him immediately.</p><p>
  <b>This fic is abandoned.</b>
</p><p>-----<br/>beta-ing by <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Maripose">maripose</a><br/>kinkmeme prompt <a href="http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=18370#cmt18370">here</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Furiosa doesn’t get angry when they present the slave to her. It’s BarterTown and you don’t _get_ angry in BarterTown. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for a lot of things but she knows she’ll be mind blowingly angry the second she steps outside the perimeter line because this man has been broken. 

He’s on a leash hanging slack to where it’s clipped onto one of the many belts the slaver is wearing, but that’s the least of it. They have him muzzled and the bars go up past his eyes, but there’s blood spattered and dried on his face where it had run down from his mouth and near his eyes. There’s a collar, a spiked choke collar, and a ring of blood trails running under his shirt. His clothes (what’s left of them) are in rags, showing the tattoo on his back and new and old lashmarks on his legs and back. There’s probably more, but it’s his eyes that grab her attention. They’re not blank or empty like she’s seen in the Wretched and other slaves, but burning bright with delirium. He’s feral, and someone, not these incompetent oafs, had tortured him into submission.

Oh yeah, she’s angry when she tunes back into what the slavers are saying, just in time to hear, “-you clap your hands, he fukkin flinches, look!” followed by their guffaws. Unamused, she offers them far more than a broken man like this would be worth and far less than the man she knows he used to be is worth. They tell her that he’s good with his mouth, more than just ripping out throats, sniggering all the while. They pass over the leash and enough of whatever they have him doped up on to keep him gone for at least a month, they assure her. 

The moment his leash is between the slavers and Furiosa, in the no man’s land of uncertain possession and grip strength, he bolts. Or, tries to. He gets a respectable lunge in before his crooked leg twists sickeningly and he lands way too hard on already viciously damaged hands. One of the slavers kicks him hard and he yelps and curls in on himself and Furiosa grabs his leash and the back of the muzzle where it crosses at the base of his skull and drags him back out of reach of the slavers.

She’s toppled a self installed deity, she can topple these assholes too.


	2. The Faces of the Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa takes him to the Citadel and starts getting him cleaned up.

She leads him out to her truck as soon as she can because all of a sudden, she’s done. The rest of her party can finish the trading expedition without her supervision. He follows on hands and knees when led, sits she stops at her truck. He doesn’t make any noise besides the sounds of his leg dragging a little as he crawls along and he doesn’t look about. The faces of the living can’t wear the faces of the dead if he can’t see them.

Leash clipped to the tailgate of her truck, she crouches down in front of him. “Max, look at me. You’re gonna be okay.”

She watches as his eyes track past her three, four times before they catch focus and then he starts _screaming_ and tearing at his muzzle, trying to get at his eyes and instead just cutting his hands on the metal and _that’s_ why his fingers are ruined and his muzzle and face are caked in blood.

Nothing she says or does seems to have any calming effect on him. She settles for letting him scream himself out in the sand and waiting for the rest of her party to return. It’s not ideal. She tries to give him water when he’s done, but he sort of really fails at using his mouth.

\----------------------------------

He struggles for a while, tied up to what is usually cargo tie downs in the bed of her truck. And then, he just stops. Furiosa can't tell if he's passed out, cracked out, or waiting it out.

Everyone knows what to do when the trading party comes blazing into the Citadel. Perishables are rushed into the cooler depths of the caves, any plants are brought to the Green Mothers and given water, any parts are sent directly to the repair caves. All the vehicles of the convoy are lifted into the caves to protect them from assault by wind, sand, and raiders. This leaves Furiosa, standing there with not-really-Max at her feet.

He doesn't wake up when Furiosa unties him from her truck and slings his frighteningly light body over her shoulders. She brings him to what used to be the Organic Mechanic's area and is now just a cleaner, brighter general purpose medical area. No one could get the eyescrews out of the rock so she tethers him to one and goes to get Toast and a bucket of water and a not-rag shirt and shorts for him and the chain cutters.

When Furiosa and Toast get back with the supplies, he's curled up on the floor, shaking and keening. He doesn't respond and when they try to uncurl him, he just tightens up. They settle for letting him stay curled up and cutting his filthy rags off and shit, he's not sweating at all and the shaking's getting worse. They try to drip water into his mouth but he won't open for it, so they scrub a patch on his arm cleaner and set him up with a saline IV.

Toast has to go talk to the guy from the Bullet Farm about how perhaps they could expand production to things that aren’t bullets so Furiosa lets her go with a small pang of regret. Furiosa goes back to work getting him clean when suddenly, the shaking gets a lot worse and he won't respond to any external stimuli, not even being slapped. Shit, this is probably withdrawal, so Furiosa gets a bit of the crazyshitdrug that came with him into his IV and the shaking settles after a bit. While he's still, maybe not passed out, but definitely not responsive, she finishes scrubbing him down.

It's easier when he's not struggling, she justifies to herself. It doesn’t make her feel any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention and nongraphic use of the drug Max has been hooked on against his will.
> 
> [This is what Furiosa's truck sounds like, in case you're interested.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f25w-p4Wbcs)
> 
> [ I made some art for this!](http://d--t.tumblr.com/post/120978709384/drew-me-some-sketches-for-the-first-two-or-three) Sketches to show what the new muzzle looks like, mostly. If you want to do art, PLEASE.
> 
> Comments are love, comments are life, and I love you all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa finishes cleaning him up

Dignity is something even animals deserve, she thinks to herself as she picks the lock on his ankle shackles. It's not difficult, but the fucking slavers didn't give her any of the keys for him and that's just another insult on top of all these injuries. Underneath, she finds welts, cuts and blood caked on where she couldn't scrub it off earlier. And when she washes it off, he shakes and mutters to himself through his torpor and she knows it hurts.

She gets the shorts on him, somewhat complicated by he hasn't really uncurled yet, and in the process discovers that he came with a cock cage and. That has to go as soon as possible, and those sandsuckers didn't even fit it right. Unacceptable. She doesn’t bother picking the lock, just cuts it off and cleans him up, ignoring his shivering.

She files down the rough edges on the ankle shackles and, after wrapping his ankles, puts them back on. After his performance earlier, they're necessary. She doesn't like it one bit.

She does the same with his wrists as she did with his ankles. Pick the lock, clean the wounds, wrap, get his clothes on. The shackles stay off because while he can certainly fight with his mangled hands, that much damage should discourage him.

She wonders if he’s aware that his leash doesn’t lock, it just clips and unclips with a little sprung latch as she moves it from the collar to the middle bar on the muzzle so she can take the collar off. The spikes on the inside are caked in his blood and where it was on his neck is a ring of sunken and bloody scars. She cleans up his wounds, but not the collar. She’s gonna hammer the spikes flat and destroy the collar. No being should wear something like that.

And then there’s this necklace. What is this, finger bones? She turns the cut off necklace through her hands, the little delicate bones clattering together. The loose ends are worn smooth and white while the strung ends are as filthy and bloody as his skin was. There’s toothmarks. She pockets it.

His hands had settled back after she'd cleaned them, fingers tangled in his muzzle and the other hand trapped between his legs and his body. After prying his hands free, she filed his nails down. A precaution, she thinks. Not dignified, she thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter! The next one is much longer!


	4. The Faces of the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max slips into his visions and Furiosa tries to calm him down.

The next day when she goes to check on him, he's awake and some kind of alert. He's moved, sitting curled up in the corner of the wall and the floor and his head tracks around when her footsteps echo into the cave. He sees her, his eyes focus on the first try and says,

"You're dead."

but then he's not blinking and his eyes don't refocus as Furiosa gets closer and he's getting louder

"you're dead. you're DEAD, YOURE DEAD YOURDEADYOUREDEAD"

and then screaming

"I KILLED YOU"

and then he jams his fingers into his muzzle, cutting them just like he did yesterday and he's biting at them and groaning

Furiosa leans in and he shrinks back. She grabs his hands away from his muzzle, puts her palm on his forehead and pushes his head against the wall. She says to him,

"No."

and then

"I am alive."

and then pushes his head harder against the wall before letting him go. He stays, exactly as she had let him go, and silently watches her step back with wide eyes.

\-----------------------------------------------

This is the first time one of his nightmares hasn't accused him of leaving them to die, first time Furiosa hasn't tried to kill him since, since...

There's supposed to be something there, there's nothing there, there's supposed to be something there there's nothing there there's nothing there he slams his head back against the wall and there's pain there there's pain

He can work with pain.

Furiosa crouches down in front of him, reaches for him, arms out blackening burning immolating, he grabs for the finger bones around his neck because this time she'll take them and let him burn in peace this time they're

they're gone they're gone gone gonegone

Her hands separate from the fire in his eyes and he slams his head back against the wall because at least one of these isn't real and

Furiosa's hands are still separate from her fire and she's got his muzzle, burning through it, metal spattering and searing his skin.

She's pulling him up, she's gonna take his face she's and he plunges his hands into the fire and there's hands already there.

the hands throw him

\----------------------------------------------------

He hits the ground like a sack of parts. He makes no attempt to break his fall, lets his muzzle hit the ground with a clang. Furiosa rolls him onto his back with her foot before placing it on his heaving chest.

"I am alive. You did not kill me. You did not kill me."

She presses down on his chest until he gasps and coughs, then lets up.

"I am real."

He rolls his head away, refuses to look at her, muttering no no no no, almost to himself. no, she's dead.

She steps, traps his head between her feet and sits on his chest.

"Look at me."

He tries to turn away and she grabs the muzzle, pulling his head around to face her.

"Max, Look at me. Tell me what you see."

He mumbles, shivers. "You're burning." He falls silent.

"How long have I been burning?"

"I killed you, I killed you I killed you-"

"Max, no. Come on, stay with me." She shakes him just a little bit and he trails off.

“I’m not going to ask you any more questions.” She lets go of his muzzle and rolls away to sit against the wall. “Just stay here with me.”

Suspiciously he rolls over on his side to watch her, waiting for her to do something. She waits.

He waits.

She outwaits him, and after he passes out she goes to talk to Toast, lead in her steps and all the pain that scrubbing the filth off Max couldn’t wash away settled in her stump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Max slips from reality into his visions. His POV section is written with a some of word repetition and panic attack style wording so if that's not your cup of tea, please use caution.


	5. Bean Stew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa takes Max on a tour of the Citadel.

"Furiosa, hey, Furiosa. Imperator, hey." Toast shakes her awake gently, from where she’d passed out on the table.

"How's he doing?"

Furiosa buries her face in her hands and sighs. "They messed him up really bad. Hooked on some kind of drug. Makes him compliant. I left him with water but he probably won’t drink it. I'm gonna bring food, see if he eats."

She lets her face slide down her flesh arm until her head hits the table.

"It's awful."

Toast sits next to her, rubs the back of her head. "He responds to his name but it’s. It’s like a syllable he responds to, not a name." She shivers, leans sideways against Toast. Toast continues patting her head gently.

"Would Max want me to put him out of this misery?" 

She leans back. Toast leans back. They stare at the table. The table offers no answers, only the wavy raised grain of ancient well worn wood.

"We have to try."

Later, after Toast has left, she pulls the fingerbone necklace from her pocket and turns it over in her fingers. She contemplates the bones, the scratches and cracks in them and thinks that it would be so easy to kill the man that did this, to water the Citadel’s gardens with his blood, watch him finally do something good with his life. But he’ll just be replaced, no matter how many times she kills his successors. She slips the fingerbones back into her pocket. It won’t be enough to kill.

\-----------------------------------------

Furiosa makes a trip by the repair caves after she picks up food for herself and Max to grab a pair of knee protectors.

Max is right where Furiosa left him, sitting next to the water bucket. It doesn't look like he drank any while she was away.

She tries to make enough noise walking that he can hear her coming. “Max, I got you some things.” She holds out the food and the knee protectors to show him and his eyes lock onto the food like an owl onto a mouse. She sets them down next to the water bucket, crouching to get down on his level.

“Max, I’m gonna take your muzzle off.” He looks at her kind of askanse, kind of confused. “So you can eat.” She clarifies.

She picks the lock at the back of his neck after she moved the leash from the bar on his muzzle to the chain on his ankle shackles. The moment the muzzle is off, his hands fly to his face, touching where the metal and leather used to be almost as if to make sure his face was real, whining when he touched the sores where the muzzle chaffed.

She waves generally at the food. “Please eat.”

As he wolfs down the food and drinks- lapping water out of the bucket, rather than using his hands to scoop it up- Furiosa cleans the muzzle. It's got blood caked between the bars, presumably his. It's got rough edges, just like his shackles. She files them down, widening the gaps to make it more difficult for him to trap his fingers in it.

When he's done, he sits and looks at her, waiting, mouth slightly open. For what, she doesn't know. He's clearly expecting something more and he’s just waiting for it. And then, she realizes. The slavers probably didn’t take his muzzle of very often, and when they did, they would make him suck them off while he was still grateful for the food. Her stomach roiled at the thought and she was glad she hadn't eaten up at the Council Room.

Disgusted, she put the muzzle next to the kneepads in front of him.

"I want you to put the kneepads on." His eyes flick from her face, to the pads and back again. He slowly puts them on, clumsily lacing the straps around his legs.

Telling him to do things makes her so uncomfortable. It would be better if he tried to resist or ignored the commands. It would be better if they hadn’t hooked in on the drugs that make him compliant. It would be better if he hadn’t left the Citadel all those years ago. She tries to smile at him, to encourage him, to mask her recriminations and how sick she feels and it only makes it worse.

She stands, deliberately appearing to forget the muzzle still on the floor. He whines, cut off with the click of teeth on metal followed by the scuff of him crawling over to her. He drops it at her feet and kneels, presenting his face, eyes closed, to her. She picks it up, discovering that he'd drooled on it in the moment he'd had it in his mouth. Sighing, she wipes it clean and locks it back on him, reattaching the leash to it.

"C’mon, follow me."

She walks slowly, accompanied by the scuffswish of him crawling beside her.

As they walk, thoughts war in her mind. He’ll stand when he wants to, he doesn't know that he has permission to stand, I have to get him a new brace even if he keeps crawling, how do I convince him that he can be fine here.

A yank on the leash looped loosely around her wrist drags her back to the present and Max is crouched, back to the wall and staring down a transfixed Just Pup. They’re at about eye level with each other, black rimmed green eyes staring into red tinged blue and Max’s breathing is accelerating.

Furiosa crouches down next to the pup. “Max, look at me.” The steel in her voice snaps his eyes to hers and she hastily shoos the pup away as soon as his focus is shifted.

“They’re not a threat. Do you remember Capable and Nux?”

He gives the slightest nod, the light glinting off the muzzle betraying the motion.

“They’re all Capable’s boys now. Just like Nux before he crashed the rig for us. They won’t hurt you or me. Not a threat.”

She wants to tell him that he’s safe but somehow she knows the last time he was truly safe was after they had outrun Joe’s army past the bog and it ended the moment he turned to tell them of a plan to take The Citadel. She says nothing, hoping silence would convey meaning like it had in the past.

After the incident with the Just Pup, Furiosa takes him out of the cool depths of the Citadel to what used to be the vault, and is now the warm and slightly damp green house. Max stalls just inside the door, looking around in what is perhaps awe as she waits patiently. The words painted up on the walls are still there, a pointed reminder to anyone who enters the room what the Citadel stands for now.

After a bit, she calls out softly. “Dag? Are you in here? I brought Max with me.”

Dag pokes her head out from behind one of the hanging trellises and smiles at them. “Hey, come on in. I’m just checking up on the beans!”

She sounds so calm but Furiosa can see the tension around her eyes and quickly replies, “I’m just showing him around. ‘ll be gone in a minute.”

Dag is already invisible behind the trellises again and Max is looking around the room like Dag is gonna swoop down and strangle him.

She crouches down next to him. “Max, look at me. She’s Dag and she oversees all the plants we have here. You know her.”

Max looks dubious at this.

“I’m gonna take you over to the kitchen and water rooms.”

\---------------------------------------

It’s not meal time, so the kitchen and water room are thankfully empty and free of the swarms of Just Boys and Pups picking up their rations. 

“You hungry?”

Max shrugs, continuing to look around. The last time she’d brought him food was earlier that morning and it was nearly midafternoon now, so that was a yes. Sliding back a metal door, she fishes a jug of bean stew out of a hole carved into the wall. It’s slightly cool as she pours some into two bowls.

“I’m gonna take your muzzle off so you can eat.”

His eyes flick rapidly from her face, to her hands, to the exit, to the floor, to her face again. He shifts just slightly, getting his feet under him before nodding.

Grabbing the chain on his wrist cuffs, she quickly moves the leash from the muzzle to the chain, apologizing, “You were gonna bolt.”

He grunts noncommittally, looking at the floor.

“You wouldn’t survive out there. Now, the muzzle.” So saying, she gently unbuckles the muzzle and passes him the bowl of bean stew and a spoon.

In the middle of wolfing it down, he stops suddenly and looks between her and the stew, making an offended face. “Flat.”

She makes the face back at him from where she’s leaning against the counter with her own bowl of stew. “We’re having trouble getting the spices to grow.”

He goes back to his stew and they eat in a companionable silence. Following Furiosa’s lead, he licks the bowl out when he’s done. He stretches to push the bowl up onto the counter instead of just handing it to her. She swipes it and fills it with water, like she had with hers, and gently swirled it around before carefully passing it back down.

“This is gonna be worse.” The apologetic shrug in her voice is nearly visible before she drinks the rinse water out of her bowl. Max doesn’t even question it, just slurps the water out of the bowl before putting it back up on the counter.

She finished cleaning the bowls before placing them back in the short stack of publicly available bowls. Most everybody had their own bowl and spoon, given to them from the public stack when they decided to stay and returned to the stack when they died. It would be possible, she supposed, to read the history of the Citadel in the pictograms crudely scratched into the outsides of the bowls.

“Muzzle?” She asks, picking it up and remembering how he had brought it to her earlier. He nods, and his compliance hurts. He should be fighting this, just like he’s trying to run.

As she buckles the muzzle back onto him, she tells him about a secluded overlook in the repair caves, stressing how quiet and unknown it is. He seems curious, so she brings him up there to watch the hum of activity below. They sit, Furiosa leaning against the wall and Max slowly settling, back always to the wall, and wordlessly watching the Just Boys tinkering and welding below. The leash makes a gentle arc between them, the lowest bit just puddling on the floor while the silence extends for hours, broken only by crashes and swearing from below when suddenly she turns to him.

“I don’t want to keep you leashed, but if you bolt now you won’t survive out there.” Her tone suggests that he should know this already.

She turns back to watching the activity below and the silence stretches out again.

“If you still want to run, in two week’s time I’ll give you supplies and you can go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Briefest mention of past max related sexual abuse.
> 
> "Just Boys" as a name for the war boys comes from someone else's fic (which one I can't remember, sorry!) where Capable told them so often that they were just boys that it stuck.


	6. A New Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa and Max watch over the repair caves.

They spent enough time up in the overlook of the repair caves being quiet that the setting sun had started to show through the cracks in the ceiling that light the huge cave, bathing it in purples and oranges. Furiosa moves, just a little in preparation for getting to her feet after sitting for so long, and Max jolts like it stung him so she stills and speaks instead.

“‘ve got my own room now.” She pauses her explanation of what’s about to happen a moment to let Max’s eyes track around to watch her, slower now than he was before. “We decided to not leave you on your own until you’re a bit better. You’re gonna share it with me for a while.” She falls silent again, leaving volumes unsaid about how The Sisters want him contained by someone who isn’t afraid of him, and The Sister’s wish is Furiosa’s command.

The sky above the cracks is nearly black when Furiosa commits to standing up, telegraphing every motion so as to not startle Max. He startles anyway and when their little offshoot tunnel meets the main tunnel, it’s rather more crowded that she’d prefer.

Minutes later, a Just Boy comes tearing down the hall at them, running flat out as fast as he possibly can as other Boys are yelling out to warn people further down the hall and grabbing Pups out of the way. Furiosa steps to the side, pushing Max along gently with her leg to get them out of the boy’s path. Velocity supercedes rank until Max lunges out, tackling the Boy to the ground with a surprised yell. Max tries to hold him down with his weight and gouge his face with the points on the muzzle as the Boy struggles and kicks out at him but Furiosa yanks the leash, pulling his head around and away from the Boy.

“Max! Bad. Joint, go.”

The Boy scrambles back and takes off running again, now with the speed of fear in his feet.

She stares pointedly at him. “Max, what happened there.”

He idles, shifting back and forth, swaying slightly.

Crouching down to his level, Furiosa tries to steady him with her hands but he lashes out, twisting away from her and accidentally slamming himself into the wall with a crunch. She hears a gasp from behind her and looks up to see a circle of Just Boys muttering about ‘ferals’ and watching the two of them. One of them looks like he’s about to be helpful which is not at all what needs to happen right now.

She orders them away, the Just Boys reluctantly trickling away from a spectacle, uncomfortable leaving their Imperator alone with a feral even though they know she can handle him.

When she turns back to Max, he’s struggling to get his feet under him. The wall he’s trying to push himself up against is only scratching his back through the thin shirt and the big muscles in his legs are visibly spazzing out with the struggle. She lets him try to stand but when he falls, she catches him and lets him down to the floor a bit more gently.

“Max? My room’s just a little bit further.” He wobbles to his hands and knees, looking a bit more stable as Furiosa walks slowly off, the leash trailing behind her gently tugging him along.

Furiosa is one of the few people in the Citadel to have her own room. It dates from the days of Joe’s reign, when rank came with significant privileges. It used to be much larger, but she gave that one up, preferring something a little less wasteful of space, a little more private. The Sisters had a larger room for themselves, still preferring to sleep together although they had annexed a much smaller room for times when someone needed to be alone. The Just Boys still slept in their bunks carved into the walls of the lower levels, their ghostly faces peering down at any night time passers by.

The slow unsteady procession stops at a wooden door that looks weirdly out of place in the stone walls. Furiosa unlocks it and swings it open wide, giving Max the chance to scope out the room before they go in.

He looks between her and the room that she hasn’t entered yet. It’s got a table on one side, weighted down by tools and a tiny engine and some flat metal probably worth its weight in water. The other side has a bench pushed up against the wall, with a blanket and a pillow folded neatly together on it. There’s another bundle on the other end and Furiosa sighs with relief. Someone had sent around an extra blanket and pillow like she’d asked.

She steps through the door and Max follows slowly through. “I’m gonna close the door now.”

It thuds shut and he jumps a little bit. His eyes are tracking between Furiosa and the bench which is obviously not wide enough for two people and might not be wide enough for one.

“You’re sleeping on the floor.” She explains, passing the second bundle to him and while he’s distracted with it, she tethers his leash to one of the legs on the table. The leash is long enough to let him move around a bit, not long enough for him to get close to the bench or the door.

Her wrist feels light without the leash on it, more unbalanced that she is with her arm off like it is now, and the thought that she could get used to him trailing her like that unsettles her in several ways. She unfolds her blanket from the pillow, setting them on the bench. “You need anything, wake me up.”

And just like that, she lies down on her bench, ignores the habitual voice in her head that sounds a lot like Cheedo telling her that she can have an actual bed you know, and the new voice that says it’s not gonna be that easy for Max, and rolls the blanket around herself.

She’s lying to herself. It’s not gonna be that easy for her to sleep either, not with such an unknown in the room. It was easier when they were taking shifts driving the War Rig. But even then, it wasn’t as bad. Maybe she fools him, keeping her breathing even, because he’s been alone for so long, but he eventually passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally feel like I'm hitting my stride on how many words I should use to describe things.
> 
> Comments are love and help me know what to focus on.


	7. The Tree of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A walk in the desert. (additional warnings in the end notes)

She’s walking through the desert, feet scuffing in the sand. She’s got a pack on her back, bulky but not a burden. Her steps are light, her stride strong, covering ground at an incredible rate. There’s a rumbling on the horizon behind her and she knows it’s a threat but there’s plenty of space and time before it becomes a worry. The stretch in her legs and the scuff of her boots makes her feel strong and alive, powerful, and she thinks _the War Rig is good, but this is better_. 

She pauses as she crests the dune to scout the horizon ahead of her, and the scuffing of her boots walks on without her. The thunder rolls up into the sky behind her when she sees a row of tilting crosses across the the top of the next dune. The pack lies forgotten behind her as she takes off running, the wind pushing her along, kicking up sand, biting at her skin. There’s screaming now, hoarse and weak and her feet are getting stuck in the sand, her boots filling up and the wind is pushing her back. Goggles pulled over her eyes, she forges ahead, fighting her way to the crosses. There’s bodies pushing up through the sand now, stripped white ribs snagging at her boots, bodies dangling on the crosses and slamming in the wind. Running is a compulsion now, she can’t stop even though her lungs are burning up, she’s screaming back at the wind but doesn’t matter, not really.

Looking over her shoulder shows the pursuit vehicles blazing across the sand behind her and she wishes for them to get blown away by the wind and when she falls to her knees in the sand and the bones, the first one gets sucked into the sky. Crawling now, she looks up and somehow she’s kneeling at the feet of the crosses, kneeling at the roots of the middle one and it’s a tree stretching up into the sky for miles, kneeling at the feet of Valkyrie. Her arms spread wide and her face turned up to the sky like the promise of rain fulfilled through the branches of the tree. And then the burning skull and halo subsumes her features, subsumes the tree, fire licking along her hair and the branches in waves. Valkyrie screams and she screams back, reaching up to take her in her arms but the tree grows ever higher out of her reach. The pool nestled in the roots sloshes, shrinking, and she scoops it up in her hands to throw it upon the fire but it glitters away uselessly in the air. Desperately she scoops up more water with her hands and it eats away at her flesh like the flames consuming Valkyrie and she screa m s

t h rowing the tangled blanket off of her, her stump in excruciating pain but rising in unison with her fist to defend herself, she stumbles to her feet. Eyes wild, scanning for threats, Max grabs her attention instantly.

He’s panting, eyes wide and unseeing, breath rasping with past screams, feet under him and back against the door. 

“Max!”

He growls and lunges at her, there’s no place to go in the tiny room and she’s bracing for the impact when his head yanks around with a sickening crunch and he collapses to the floor. The leash is stretched taught between the muzzle and the leg of the workbench.

Remaining defensive, she waits for him to move first, to determine if he’s still a threat. He groans faintly, rolling to get the tension out of the leash, looking around dazedly. Deciding that he’s not a threat like that, she sits on the floor where he can see her.

“You okay?” She points at her neck to complete the question.

He nods, wincing in pain.

She looks at him like he’s lying, which he is. He rubs his neck like he’s trying to get the kink out but it’s not working and Furiosa thinks better of offering to help, and then does it anyway. “You want help with that?”

He shies away when she reaches out, hissing at her. She backs away instantly, going back to her bench, hand tucked at her side. She struggles with what to do, face stoic, and eventually offers him a drink of water which he promptly declines by ignoring that she ever spoke.

Helpless, she wraps her blanket around her shoulders and leans back against the wall, watching him. He watches her. The impasse lasts for an approximate eon before Max’s stillness dissolves into jittering and keening and when she reaches out to him he weakly lashes out.

Withdrawal, Furiosa thinks. Withdrawal. They said he’d die from it without regular dosing, but he can’t live like this. _She_ can’t live like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a split dream/reality sequence.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fixing the little things :')

Waking up in the morning implies having slept, and Furiosa feels like she’s been run over with her own truck. Hand scrubbed over her face, back popped back into comfort, she looks over at Max. He’s breathing evenly, quietly, and otherwise motionless. In the last two weeks, he’s accumulated another blanket and two pillows in addition to his original blanket but somehow he always ends up curled tightly around one pillow with his head on the other and the blankets scrunched up between his feet. 

She smiles at him, praying to nothing at all that today will be a good day, that it stays as peaceful as it looks in this moment. And then, ever practical, she gets herself some water and pulls the basket with their work from the last couple of weeks in it into her lap. Picking over the parts, right handed, bending hinges between her fingers, she thinks about it. _If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane._ Well, they’d both tried to fix what was broken, and here they were, a man sleeping on the floor in shackles and a muzzle, locked in a cage so long that being without it was more unsettling than leaving it on, and a one armed woman who’s spent years sleeping on a bench and avoiding god-hood. But the contents of the basket are progress, fixing what’s broken; during Max’s lucid moments, they’ve been building him a new leg brace. It’s all his work and working with his hands, using his mind for something more than trying to get through the next hour has been calming.

But the lucid moments have been far between, although they’ve been getting longer and more frequent of late. In the beginning, they didn’t know how much the slavers had been dosing him with. Max had been under the drug induced parallel reality so long that he had no idea what it was, or how much of it they were giving him, or how frequently. The only tell was how tracked out his left arm was and they had to experiment, keeping him on the fine line between roasting his head with too much or stopping his heart with too little. And then, over weeks, slowly weaning him off of it through the convulsions and the fights and the screaming and the sleepless nights and days.

The hinge squeaks between her fingers, bringing her back to the present. Grabbing some oil, she makes it quiet before cradling the parts in the crook of her elbow and fitting them together. They’ll probably finish it today, and she’s hoping that he’ll start walking on his feet more in the coming days. Without the brace, his leg betrays him and his lopsided three pointed crawl with his left leg held so the knee swings just clear of the floor makes sense.

With a groan, Max rolls over and stretches like an old dog.

“Mornin’, Max”

She gets his customary grunt in return. He’s not a morning person.

She gives him a minute, more like ten, to assemble his mind to face being awake before holding out the basket with the brace in it. “I think we can finish this today.”

Squinting, he looks between her face and the basket a couple of times before grunting the affirmative. 

“Food.” He holds out his shackles to her.

“You know you can take them off yourself.” She says, not for the first time and likely not for the last time. Her tone is as kind as her hand as she picks the key off the table, from well within Max’s reach, and unlocks his wrists and his ankles. He shakes the shackles off, rubbing his wrists and ankles and declining the motion to remove the muzzle.

“C’mon, gimme a hand.” They smirk at each other, and then Max helps her with her arm, helping snug the buckles down into position before they head off to the mess hall.

By the time Furiosa returns with two bowls of (more) bean based stew, Max has casually removed his muzzle, dropping it and the leash into the basket on top of the brace parts. They dig in and eat in companionable silence

Soon enough, they’re on their way to the Sewing Caves. The last bit left to do are the leather bands that go around his leg, to replace the cloth scraps he’s been using to mock it up so far. Furiosa leads, this is one of the few places they haven’t been in the last intermittent month of lucid moments.

“Furiosa, Max.” A large pale woman greets them as they enter, looking up from some mending.

“Hey, Marie. How’re you?”

“Good, good.” She goes back to her mending as Max unclips himself from the leash and starts going through the crates stacked against the wall. Furiosa and Marie chat a little, largely ignoring him as he mutters and grunts to himself, running strips of cloth and leather through his fingers. Every once in a while, one would end up tucked into a pocket. Eventually he pulled up a stool next to Marie and Furiosa and dumped out the pieces he’d chosen on his lap, mulling them over some more before tossing what was once, perhaps, a War Boy’s belt at Furiosa.

She inspects it, it’s solid and strong, tosses it back to him.

“We’ll get outta your hair now, Marie. Thanks!” She waves to Marie and Max sorta vaguesmiles at her as they depart.

Max tugs on the leash, pulls Furiosa back to her room instead of the more populated workshops and gently taps the door shut behind them with his foot. He shrugs at her as he pulls himself up onto the stool they’d gotten for him. “Don’ want eyes on me.”

She slings the basket onto the table, careless of the other projects scattered across it and tugs her bench over so she can sit beside Max. The clatter startles him and he twitches but doesn’t bolt. Motions a little shaky, he starts assembling the parts of the brace around his leg. By the time he’s done, his motions have smoothed out again.

“May I?” She holds the belt out as he finishes assembling the brace, awkwardly holding it in place. He grunts the affirmative, so she passes it around his leg where it would rest in the slots of the brace. Taking it to the table, she cuts it off and measures the remainder against his leg again, marking that bit for length as well.

He takes the leather strips from her as she holds the brace in place. Steadily, he punches the holes for the buckles through, cleaning up the edges with a knife. And then, the last step. The leather is carefully threaded through the slots and the buckles, their hands gently bumping as they work.

She offers him her arm as he stands up. He declines with a grunt, standing unsteadily on two legs with a confused smile on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a massive time jump from the end of the last chapter. I hope that's clear!
> 
> [casual mention of the milk mothers GO]


	9. Notes pt1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic is officially abandoned.
> 
> What follows is what I wrote before I abandoned it. I realized I was doing the wrong thing with the wrong characters and couldn't carry on.

He’s safe here, she tells herself as she searches the hydroponics area top to bottom before hurrying off to the repair caves. He likes the repair caves, maybe he’s there. He’s not, and the Just Boys haven’t seen him since yesterday.

Right, maybe the kitchens. He’s started getting water on his own, and pushing at Furiosa until she gives him more food at mealtimes. Nobody there has seen him and now she’s worried. The Citadel is not a safe place, really, it’s easy to get hurt or lost in its labyrinthine tunnels. They’d lost plenty of War Pups in the past to falls and one very memorable rockslide.

She's rounding the corner back up the hydroponics levels and there he is, sitting peaceably in a bend of the hall like he’s been there all day. He looks up at her, she looks down at him, and she doesn’t know whether to be upset or relieved so she strides by him into the rooms beyond. She plucks a damaged leaf off one of the plants before turning to face him because of course he followed her.

She eats half the leaf. He watches her, eyes never straying from her face.

She gives in and gives him the other half.

 

**Alternate version**

 

They find him hours later in the black depths of the repair caves where the sand drifts undisturbed and the unattended wrecks and partmobiles lie listless and skeletal. He's curled up, wedged in the narrow gap between the add on fuel tanks and the side of the Interceptor.

Furiosa had it brought in years ago when all the other wrecked vehicles on the Fury Road got pulled in. No sense wasting parts, she told herself as she looked over the mangled Interceptor. Nevertheless, she had it hauled up first and hidden all the way in the back where it would be noticed last, if ever.

She'd done a little work on it but every time she set wrench to it, it felt so wrong. So she cleaned off the blood and left it.

And here he was. He found it. He'd clearly found it some time ago: the sand was cleared to a neat three feet away from the vehicle, the seats cleaned off, the War Boy paraphernalia removed and pushed out beyond the edge of the sand, a couple of tools perched up on what remained of the dash, presumably hidden on the car before it was wrecked or stolen from the better lit areas.

He looks like he's sleeping, so they leave him there.


	10. Notes pt2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second part of what I'd written before I abandoned this fic.
> 
> Look at my terrible max characterization, wow.

The Citadel has loyal people who roam in the wastes. They're not scouts, they're not warriors, not exactly. But when they choose to return to the Citadel, they always bring information with them. They do not expect food or fuel, but they always receive it. And this time, one of them brought news of a raiding party, several days away and heading in their direction.

In minutes, the Citadel whet from a low hum to the clatter of scout vehicles being deployed, perishables and damagables being herded into the depths of the caves, gates being lowered, messengers being sent to GasTown and the Bullet Farm, and weapons being readied.

Overseeing it all, Furiosa and The Wives arrayed behind her. The Wives ran the Citadel, but Furiosa protected it by their mandate.

A day later the scouts came back, confirming the reports as Furiosa finishes checking over the War Rig. Max crawls up and sits on top of the cab and watches the proceedings with unusually bright and curious eyes. She drops the hood, snaps the latches closed, turns to put the tools away. A loud clang behind her startles her and she finds Max crouched next to the intakes for the superchargers.

She's seen Max smile, not much to be sure, and she's seen him scared and in pain, and this is none of those. This is excitement. He knows what's coming and he wants it.

"Max, come down here!"

He clambers down and drops at her feet. She crouches to get on eyelevel with him.

"I need you to stay here. I'll be back soon." She reaches to pet his head and he twists to shove his muzzle into her hands.

"Come on, I can't have you getting hurt!"

He growls at her, deliberately catching the muzzle on the fingers of her prosthetic and pulling.

"Fine, fine." She unbuckles the muzzle and passes it off to Capable, who hands a knife back. "You know you could have taken it off yourself."

He rubs his head against her thigh and scrambles back up on top of the War Rig's cab.

“Oi, Max!” She tosses the knife up to him and he grabs it out of the air with his teeth. His grin around the blade is something to give nightmares.

He comes down off the cab and sits at her side during the drive out to meet the oncoming war party. He’s radiating the air of someone pacing until he sees the oncoming party, and then he’s back out, crawling onto the hood to get a better look and jumping up onto the cab to get a better grip before the onslaught hit them.

Furiosa has about 10 seconds to wonder how long it’s been since Max fought before the fight slams into flaming reality and she has everything else to worry about. She drives with the same tight lipped precision she always has, plowing down anything slow enough get stuck in front of her and the lancers riding the spine of the truck throwing down on anything foolish enough to stray near.

One blast on the horn is all the warning they get before she swings the entire body of the truck around, slamming it into the oncoming vehicles before pulling away and putting her back to the battle. There’s pursuit vehicles up ahead, running down anything that got through the first wall of death. Some straggler that the pursuits left behind gets the bright idea of taking Furiosa on all by himself and then there’s a fireball at the nose of the truck and she sees Max go by over the hood, his body fully extended in a leap. In that glimpse, she sees he’s bloody to the elbows but the knife is still clean and then she’s far too busy repelling boarders to keep track of him again.

Suddenly there’s someone in the seat beside her. They’re busy trying to kill her, she’s busy trying to kill them  _ and _ drive the truck and in the moment where she’s driving the truck more than trying to kill the boarders there’s a horrifying rending sound and Max is there, his teeth in the guy’s throat and his body still half out the window. The next moment she’s shooting a guy in the face and then Max is heaving the body out of the window and the blood on his face is dripping onto his chest and she was wrong, this is the grin to give nightmares.


End file.
